Is the reign of Esxi as the Hypervisor of choice for learning at home, virtually over?
You've probably heard of virtualization and virtual machines. You may have even wanted to spin something up yourself at home to try it out.
Virtualization lets you use a single piece of hardware's resources to act like several different pieces of physical hardware e.g one physical server acting like 5 smaller virtual servers.
Confusing yes but also very useful.
Virtual machines can be run inside an operating system like Windows using something like Oracle Virtualbox.
Virtualbox let's you run these VMs alongside your normal programs when you need to but you can run into performance and compatibility issues.
The more efficient way to do this is through a Bare Metal Hypervisor like Esxi. This allows you manage your resources and virtual machines more effectively without all the extra bloat of a full OS.
Plus it's a bit closer to how this would work in a real production server environment.
Why Esxi?
The vSphere Hypervisor (Esxi) from VM Ware is a Bare Metal Hypervisor that is installed onto a physical server. Once installed this is used instead of an OS like Windows and allows you to run multiple Virtual Machines on a single piece of server hardware.
https://www.vmware.com/uk/products/esxi-and-esx.html
The software has a simple Management web dashboard that you can connect to from a browser, with quick access to all of your VMs. You can start, stop, copy, monitor, troubleshoot and edit them as you need all in one place.
The real pull though is that you used to be able to get perpetual licenses for free to try out the software. It's closed source and so you have to go to Esxi for your updates directly.
This lets anybody run a single Esxi host without all of the more advanced options that that are only available with the more expensive paid licenses in V-Sphere.
If you want to cluster your hosts for High Availability failover or to share those resources between hosts you'll need one of those paid licenses.
I was able to get hands on experience in my own home lab with the free VM Ware evaluation licence myself. Playing around with this, I was able to then use those skills in my day-to-day job through practice outside it.
Why the need to change?
Well, since the purchase of VMWare as a whole by Broadcom many ways in which the software is licensed and sold is being revised.
There's panic that prices will now start to sky-rocket for licenses to use Esxi in businesses by the new owners of VM Ware.
Broadcom have stated they have plans to deal directly with their top 2000 VM Ware Customers thus pivoting away from just releasing updates for everyone.
Things are still are still in flux around the topic but I like any excuse to try out new software. I'm now looking at the other options that would work for me.
I'd like to try and use something that would be used in an Enterprise environment so I can learn at home to use as work.
With that in mind I've narrowed my picks down to just 3 choices
Proxmox
First up, it's Proxmox and probably the one you've most likely already heard of.
I built my current Esxi host in March 2023 moved over from another host pretty much starting from scratch. At the time I looked into Proxmox but couldn't really see this being used in businesses.
Delving deeper they do actually have an Enterprise license but being based in Europe might be a bit of a barrier for those companies in the states when it comes to that support.
The main benefits for me are:
- Open-Source and Free for Personal Use
- Linux Based System (It's just Debian and I like a bit of Debian)
- Container support built in
- Lots of Community online support in Guides, Forums, other users
- Great looking Web Dashboard Interface built in
- Simple and free way to cluster the hosts
- Simple way to schedule and perform backups
- Live migrations of running VMs
- Can be set up with High-Availability for failover and redundancy
The main cons for me are:
- Enterprise support could be tricky due to time difference
- Proxmox can take a little time to learn for specific functions
- Nested virtualization can be an issue e.g. Hyper V in a VM
- Potential issues with passing through graphics cards
XCP-NG
This is the one that really caught my eye as it looked the most like Esxi and the project seemed to be based on Citrix XenServer.
Released in March 2018 after a successful KickStarter by the original founder of Xen Orchestra, Oliver Lambert. It's built off the base of several different Linux Distributions including CentOS and other tech stacks.
It's slightly different in that you need to have a running VM or somewhere else on the network to run it's Management dashboard software called Xen Orchestra.
The main benefits for me are:
- Open-Source and Free for Personal Use
- Linux Based System
- Container support built in
- Lots of Community online support in Guides, Forums, other users
- Great looking Web Dashboard Interface To Manage Many Hosts
- Simple and free way to cluster the hosts
- Nested Virtualization works
- Simple way to schedule and perform backups
- Live Migrations of running VMs
- Big install and user base
- Great Enterprise support packages
The main cons for me are:
- Not a big fan of having to use a VM on the machine for the Xen Orchestra Management dashboard
- The GUI doesn't have much information in default overviews
- Uses yum for packages instead of apt which I would need to learn
VM Ware Esxi
In a shock twist, I actually made Esxi my third choice.
I've managed to keep the current Esxi host on an old Dell XPS 8930 Desktop running for 188 continuous days without a reboot before I had a powercut due to a flood.
I'm already very familiar with it and in my opinion with the some customers getting multi-year renewals means there will still be people using this for years to come.
The main benefits for me are:
- Free for Personal Use
- Container support built in
- Lots of Community online support in Guides, Forums, other users
- Great looking Web Dashboard Interface In Built to manager VMs
- Nested Virtualization works
- Big install and user base
- Great Enterprise support packages if you pay for them
The main cons for me are:
- Getting an evaluation license for new installs is now almost impossible
- Enterprise support renewals could be tricky now moving forwards
- Potential issues with passing through graphics cards
- No more patches for free license users
- What other surprises may come from Broadcom
- Will customers reject the new pricing scheme making it obsolete
- Closed source so development is only done by the VM Ware Team
Closing Thoughts
Now, for those who've just built an Esxi box for the first time.
First, up well done, that wasn't an easy install and I don't think there's really any rush to move to something else just yet.
For me, I'll be staying on my single Esxi host for a little while longer while I weigh up the options.
I'm also interested to see what else I've missed before I take the plunge.
Esxi has worked for me till now and sometimes if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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